In the first year of this website, I managed to produce six entire blog posts. The last one went live Dec. 13, 2016. Which is to say I’m not exactly on pace to match the initial productivity rate.
The last time I launched an online writing project, I committed to posting something every day. That proved to be an almost overwhelming task, but it absolutely transformed the way I saw the world and went about my day. Self imposed deadlines and focus caused me to seek inspiration nearly everywhere — and oftentimes forced inspiration inorganically, which certainly showed in the final product.
And it’s not as if I don’t write at all. The newspaper I’ve been with for more than a decade runs my personal column every Tuesday, my baseball column every Wednesday and my editorials at least twice a week, down from three or four. These are, by the standards of certain professional organizations, award-winning pieces of journalism. (Yes, really!) I have a few other projects as well, and there are days my “favorite part of the day” Facebook posts stretch past a hundred words, which in many contexts is not a lot but still represent a degree of craftsmanship — or at least they should, because even a hundred words can be a lot to ask of a reader.
But here, in this space carved out for me with intent at seeing it grow into something, I’ve flagged. I’m not entirely sure why. One reason is because I’m consciously trying to not write about my kids, which is difficult because as the father of four boys from preschool through junior high, my kids are the center of daily life. Their schedule informs my schedule. Very little can be done independent of them — nothing can be done alone without providing for their temporary care — and often when I get moments to myself at home it is to complete tasks for them, such as laundering their clothes. This is not a complaint. If anything, it is a badge of honor. It also is not rare, as any borderline functional parent understands these obligations. But with so much of my personal and social media life orbiting these essential life forces, well, not writing about them is a challenge I’ve not overcome.
Another reason is I struggle with having anything worthwhile to add to the conversation. Any conversation. This might seem goofy just two paragraphs after explaining people pay me to write my opinion and then give me certificates saying I’m good at doing so, but to the extent my mind wanders off the family (and the Cubs) it drifts toward the issues of the day, and for many months now my overwhelming thought about the issues of the day is that straight, white, Christian, married dads have more or less overstayed their welcome as the majority force in all sorts of arenas. While there’s certainly some value in honestly presenting as someone who can be all those things and also trying to be a good human citizen, there’s far more value in being quiet and listening to the stories and experiences of all sorts of other people whose voices have not been given their share of our collective time.
The problem for someone trying to create content — man, do I dislike that phrase — is that reading and listening doesn’t exactly look like anything. Nor does it necessarily do anything except for me, the reader and listener, because it’s all happening on the top screen part of the laptop (instead of the keyboard) or coming through the earbuds via podcast and rarely ever through any sort of personal interaction. As a copy editor, I constantly ask reporters to write in the active voice. In practice, I often am passive voice in human form, letting life happen to me instead of pushing out and seeing which way the waves ripple.
Perhaps the biggest reason I don’t write here more often is I never really did settle on what types of posts I should put here. The most obvious answer is “stuff that doesn’t fit in any of the other outlets,” but I’ve got enough free rein in those venues — and Facebook and Twitter are wide open — such that a little focus would go a long way. So that’s something to work on for 2018, in addition to doing actual exercise beyond walking to work and to stop eating so much microwave popcorn and so many Goldfish crackers.
Hitting publish on this jumble is its own act of indulgence, and I’m quite aware I’m not doing enough in this space to have even a handful of people wondering when more might be coming forth (to the extent anyone remembers it’s here), but perhaps if I can create some sort of standard and then hold myself accountable, the result might be something useful to someone somewhere. At the very least it’ll represent activity over being passive.
Anyway, thanks for listening. More soon. In less than 50 weeks. I promise.